As disheartening as it is to say, our pace bowling attack looked like it was made up for amateur bowlers trying to compete with pros and struggling at almost every corner. We have failed to follow the basics of pace bowling, bowled way too short/wide way too often and that has undone the hard work done by pacers in the rest of the over.
I do like Shafi/Rubel combo in ODIs, but seems like they are not ready for test level yet. But what can we do, just wrap our arms around and wait for them to grow? BCB must take some actions, and here are a few ideas that have come to my mind
1. Root level search: I saw Fire in babylon recently and saw how Clive Lloyd searched all over the Caribbeans and came up with the deathly quartet. BCB must do similar searches, I find it hard to believe that amongst 150 million people we won't have 2 bowlers who can consistently knock the 90mph barrier. There has to be some talent hidden in the rural/urban areas and BCB must act to extract them

2. Search abroad for pacers: There are many Bangladeshis playing at respectable levels in England/South Africa/Australia, why not pick a couple of pacers who are doing good at sub-state level, give them adequate training and see how they go.

3. Send potential national team pacers abroad to play: Send some of the youngsters, say Alauddin Babu over to Australia to play grade cricket for a whole season, or to minor counties. Playing in such conditions will be extremely helpful for players who are willing to make the jump from academy to A team.

I don't think hiring a better coach will be a sustainable solution, we need to develop a fast bowling culture where we are used to seeing 4 pace men in our team and not 4 spinners. Spinners can win you ODIs at home, but in order to really come up as a strong cricketing nation we need to have quality pacemen. Otherwise we have to be satisfied by winning the odd ODI against the G8 at home. It's time BCB wakes up and acts on this issue.

for the time being I would say we need to stop focusing on speed and find bowlers who can swing the ball and has better control.

As we have seen in the India vs England test, Praveen Kumar was just as effective as Ishant Sharma. So we don't need to go on a wild goose chase for a 90mph speed star. What we need is a thinking medium pacer with considerable swinging skills in the mold of Vaas, Akib Javed etc....

Until we find such pacers we need to give Sayed Rasel and Nazmul Hossain an opportunity to stake their claim in the national side. I am confident they wouldn't do any worse than Shafiul and Rubel

Originally Posted by beshideshi
As disheartening as it is to say, our pace bowling attack looked like it was made up for amateur bowlers trying to compete with pros and struggling at almost every corner. We have failed to follow the basics of pace bowling, bowled way too short/wide way too often and that has undone the hard work done by pacers in the rest of the over.
I do like Shafi/Rubel combo in ODIs, but seems like they are not ready for test level yet. But what can we do, just wrap our arms around and wait for them to grow? BCB must take some actions, and here are a few ideas that have come to my mind
1. Root level search: I saw Fire in babylon recently and saw how Clive Lloyd searched all over the Caribbeans and came up with the deathly quartet. BCB must do similar searches, I find it hard to believe that amongst 150 million people we won't have 2 bowlers who can consistently knock the 90mph barrier. There has to be some talent hidden in the rural/urban areas and BCB must act to extract them

2. Search abroad for pacers: There are many Bangladeshis playing at respectable levels in England/South Africa/Australia, why not pick a couple of pacers who are doing good at sub-state level, give them adequate training and see how they go.

3. Send potential national team pacers abroad to play: Send some of the youngsters, say Alauddin Babu over to Australia to play grade cricket for a whole season, or to minor counties. Playing in such conditions will be extremely helpful for players who are willing to make the jump from academy to A team.

I don't think hiring a better coach will be a sustainable solution, we need to develop a fast bowling culture where we are used to seeing 4 pace men in our team and not 4 spinners. Spinners can win you ODIs at home, but in order to really come up as a strong cricketing nation we need to have quality pacemen. Otherwise we have to be satisfied by winning the odd ODI against the G8 at home. It's time BCB wakes up and acts on this issue.

To help you, this from the India newspapers recently. It shows that even at state level the issues have already been identified:

Haryana Cricket Association (HCA) has devised plans to make an extensive talent hunt from the urban and rural areas of the State, on the lookout for genuine pace bowlers.

“We will go for talent hunt for the High Performance Programme starting with the Chaudhary Bansi Lal Pace Bowling scheme, from structured cricket centres like the district cricket associations and urban areas, as well as from rural areas where the boys may not be into cricket, but playing some other sports or doing agriculture etc., but has the talent for the game,” explained HCA secretary Anirudh Chaudhary.

He said the HCA was in talks with England-based Ian Pont, who was the pace bowling coach of the Bangladesh World Cup team, and author of the book, ‘Fast Bowlers’ Bible’. Pont specialises in bio-mechanics that says that the power generated in the body is used for the delivery of the ball. “We want to unearth very quick bowlers, starting the talent hunt on a smaller scale, but will expand as we go along, with the help of sponsors. Pont’s brief will not only be to train a selective group of say ten players, and coaching the coaches, while the other group of 30-40 boys will be trained by four Indian coaches,” explained the HCA secretary. “Our emphasis will be on sincerity and discipline as we have often seen that some players are talented, but insincere and undisciplined,” he stated.

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Originally Posted by WarWolf
Coach
Any short term solution for the pace attack?

We also need to grow a culture of growing offies and leggies. Right now SLAs are everywhere.

No short term solution other than existing pacers get into nets and practice hard on bowling the ball to hit off stump - just like we did when i was there. We focused on that every day we trained. The fruits were there in the 4-0 Banglawash and 3-1 ODI win over Zim.

So something is going wrong if they are not doing that.

Longer term - ID and develop talent. Coach the next pacers waiting to come in. Get them to understand how to develop themselves.

It isn't rocket science

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No Cheating. No Corruption. No Excuses.
Players/Coaches have a duty to report and help clean up our wonderful game of cricket. We are the guardians of the game for the fans.

Originally Posted by Ian Pont
No short term solution other than existing pacers get into nets and practice hard on bowling the ball to hit off stump - just like we did when i was there. We focused on that every day we trained. The fruits were there in the 4-0 Banglawash and 3-1 ODI win over Zim.

So something is going wrong if they are not doing that.

Longer term - ID and develop talent. Coach the next pacers waiting to come in. Get them to understand how to develop themselves.

It isn't rocket science

What makes me shocked is their lack of control over line and length. They didn't attack the stumps at all while bowling. The reason probably is that they were not confident enough to trying to hit the off stump corridor regularly.

When Shafiul came for the first time, we have seen him swinging the ball nicely. He lost it completely in this test. Rubel didn't get reserve swing, Robiul had some swing but was not consistent enough.

As you indicated , all these things suggest that they were not regular in practice. If a player has to depend on the national team practice sessions only to maintain and develop his skills then he better should stop playing cricket.

It's not hard to hang a net in a field and put three stumps in front of it. Get a ball boy to collect you the ball. Then continue practicing. You won't need national team set up for that. You can do it yourself even being in the remote part of the country.

Originally Posted by WarWolf
What makes me shocked is their lack of control over line and length. They didn't attack the stumps at all while bowling. The reason probably is that they were not confident enough to trying to hit the off stump corridor regularly.

When Shafiul came for the first time, we have seen him swinging the ball nicely. He lost it completely in this test. Rubel didn't get reserve swing, Robiul had some swing but was not consistent enough.

As you indicated , all these things suggest that they were not regular in practice. If a player has to depend on the national team practice sessions only to maintain and develop his skills then he better should stop playing cricket.

It's not hard to hang a net in a field and put three stumps in front of it. Get a ball boy to collect you the ball. Then continue practicing. You won't need national team set up for that. You can do it yourself even being in the remote part of the country.

And the truth will set you free.....

__________________
No Cheating. No Corruption. No Excuses.
Players/Coaches have a duty to report and help clean up our wonderful game of cricket. We are the guardians of the game for the fans.

Coach, why do you think the bowling deteriorated so much all of a sudden? During the NZ series, Shafiul and Rubel showed fair bit of consistency and control with the ball. You always emphasize going into the nets and practice hard. Do our pacers lack the motivation or the desire to do so?

I think they are being too complacent. They are not learning from their mistakes and putting in the hard work. This is really sad. I think the management/BCB should do something to make the players work hard. If they are reluctant, they simple have to let them go. You can't be that complacent when you wear the national jersey. You have to earn it and fight for it every day.

Just finding talents won't be enough. Along with other proposals above, we need to build fast pitch and designate may be one of the state to make fast pitch only for domestic cricket session. So, during our domestic session, when team visits each other's ground, they won't have any choice but add more pacers in the team. And it will also encourage other state to build fast pitch to practice/prepare so that they can compete in the domestic arena. Again just finding talents won't be enough, we need to nurture them and they need a home. And As I said "If you build it, they will come". Just an idea.

Originally Posted by Ian Pont
To help you, this from the India newspapers recently. It shows that even at state level the issues have already been identified:

Haryana Cricket Association (HCA) has devised plans to make an extensive talent hunt from the urban and rural areas of the State, on the lookout for genuine pace bowlers.

“We will go for talent hunt for the High Performance Programme starting with the Chaudhary Bansi Lal Pace Bowling scheme, from structured cricket centres like the district cricket associations and urban areas, as well as from rural areas where the boys may not be into cricket, but playing some other sports or doing agriculture etc., but has the talent for the game,” explained HCA secretary Anirudh Chaudhary.

He said the HCA was in talks with England-based Ian Pont, who was the pace bowling coach of the Bangladesh World Cup team, and author of the book, ‘Fast Bowlers’ Bible’. Pont specialises in bio-mechanics that says that the power generated in the body is used for the delivery of the ball. “We want to unearth very quick bowlers, starting the talent hunt on a smaller scale, but will expand as we go along, with the help of sponsors. Pont’s brief will not only be to train a selective group of say ten players, and coaching the coaches, while the other group of 30-40 boys will be trained by four Indian coaches,” explained the HCA secretary. “Our emphasis will be on sincerity and discipline as we have often seen that some players are talented, but insincere and undisciplined,” he stated.

Is it really that hard to implement a similar strategy in Bangladesh? We don't necessarily need a coach of your cailbre, but just a proper cricket coach who will be able to guide young quicks through the ranks. BCB must wake up and realize playing 4 spinners in a team is just a stop gap solution, success in long term demands a decent pace attack.

imahmud bhai has raised a very interesting point, why not make pitches so seamer friendly that state teams are forced to play 4 pacers? This will give the national selectors a larger pool to work with, and up and coming cricketers will see there are 4 spots available if you are a pacer and may turn into a pacer!

And obviously, we will not unearth someone of Wasim Akram's level, we will find the raw talents and highly skilled coaches will work on them and bring them to international standards. let's see how long will BCB keep their heads in their a*****

Originally Posted by mufi_02
Coach, why do you think the bowling deteriorated so much all of a sudden? During the NZ series, Shafiul and Rubel showed fair bit of consistency and control with the ball. You always emphasize going into the nets and practice hard. Do our pacers lack the motivation or the desire to do so?

I think they are being too complacent. They are not learning from their mistakes and putting in the hard work. This is really sad. I think the management/BCB should do something to make the players work hard. If they are reluctant, they simple have to let them go. You can't be that complacent when you wear the national jersey. You have to earn it and fight for it every day.

Ian, how is fast bowling related to a bowlers physical strength? Common sense would say there is a strong relationship. I mean look at Lee, Akhter, Tait, Steyn. All these guys seem very strong and well built. Unfortunately the same cant be said about the likes of Shafiul, Nazmul, Dollar Mahmud et.

Secondly, Sri Lanka seems to be having a good time in the pace bowling department. They probably have 10 quicks who have the ability to break into the national team. What did they do right that we cant do?

I also like Jadukor's comment. Sometimes its not all about pace. Kulasekara is one of the top bowlers in the world. He bowls around 125-130 kph max. His bowling is all about control, accuracy, movement. Vaas used to do the same before him. Why cant any of our bowlers bowl like that?